Our Mission
We're building the workforce operating system for the 100 million hourly workers in the US.
Restaurants and retailers employ more people than any other industry. They deserve software built for their reality — not adapted from enterprise HR tools designed for Fortune 500 companies.
The problem we solve
Hiring an hourly worker should be fast. The typical candidate applies on their phone, expects to hear back within hours, and will move on if they don't. Yet most restaurant and retail operators are still using spreadsheets, manual texts, and legacy software built in 2005.
The result: 72-hour average response times, 68% ghosting rates before interviews, and $1,500 spent per hire — all for a role that might turn over in 90 days. The math doesn't work. And the tools haven't kept up.
Zelvar fixes this by putting AI at the center of the hiring process. Sam, our AI voice agent, calls every applicant within minutes — nights, weekends, no exceptions. Managers wake up to a pipeline of pre-screened, scored candidates ready for interviews. No chasing, no ghosting, no wasted hours.
Our approach
We built Zelvar AI-native from day one — not as a feature bolted onto a legacy ATS, but as a system designed around the assumption that AI handles the volume work so humans can focus on people.
We believe speed is compliance. Getting to a candidate in 5 minutes instead of 72 hours isn't just good hiring — it's the only way to compete in today's labor market. Zelvar is designed for the operators who understand that.
We also believe in honesty about what AI can and can't do. Zelvar's AI screens and scores — humans make the hire. Every score includes reasoning. Every decision is auditable.
Team
Mazen Amer
Founder & CEO · Orlando, FL
Mazen built Zelvar after watching restaurant operators struggle with tools that weren't built for their pace. He focuses on product, AI systems, and the specific operational needs of restaurant and retail hiring teams.
Funding
Zelvar is bootstrapped and pre-revenue. We're building with customer revenue, not VC money. This means we focus entirely on building things operators actually pay for — not on metrics that look good in a pitch deck.